Category: Poetry

The maze is a list,
a catalog of ships
left in a garden

& everybody knows
they don’t belong
& everybody knows

if they had been left
on water they would
take us to new places,

but here they are,
all terrible weight
& splinter, pain

& loss, a closed loop
that makes knowledge
another colony.

– Darren C. Demaree… ...continue reading

Absolution ^[1]

when the night winds down beside you,
indifferently, lethargically, like
a cat
and the wonderance pesters you
like a cat
to backtrack
the day’s density,
be it complex or mundane, dense nonetheless,
and makes you replay
every interaction
flip-book style
showing how
your consonants cut
when it should have glided, how your eyes
scoured
when it ought to have gleamed, and how
last night
you said you’d change,
how you’d vowed
to be less harsh
to mother, friend, and cat,
to everyone, really,
but especially
to yourself,
and how,
regrettably,
you’d broken that vow
today
again,

remember that
you can try
     again
tomorrow.
and you can keep trying
again
         and again
            and again.

– Shawn Rampaul

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^[1] “There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.… ...continue reading

1.

In the canebrake behind the sea
where at night the crickets

become mute when we get close,
there’s a giant hand ruffling

the canes and the canes are
up again in a moment.

It’s wild boars—an entire
family, descended from the hills.

At the village they say the beasts are
confused, that the climate is

changing—but that is not
why the boars have come down here.… ...continue reading

and my mother buried him at the Waynesville cemetery in a double plot with a pair of tombstones, one for him and an unmarked slab waiting for her, and my father became a crow in the red maple behind the house in Hazelwood, and my mother lived another thirty years and waited for the day when she would lay down again with my old man. And sometimes my father would call her and sometimes she would pack a picnic lunch and sit outside sharing a pb & j and a slice of Dad’s favorite cherry pie. And often, she would be scolded with a caw from the telephone line running to the back of the kitchen. And she didn’t mind when my father stole the seeds for the smaller birds she kept in the bird-feeder hanging from the maple all winter long.… ...continue reading

The latest resolution
composed at 0549 on a Friday
travelling 61 mph on the 405 as
mist from trucks around me
bathes my car in a benevolent
poisonous rinse;
this rain the first since April
& so encumbered
with unreasonable expectations
similar to that of the
first born
to a failing monarchy;
on it I do swear
to refrain from writing anymore
about birds.
Or the moon.… ...continue reading

The moon has shrunk itself
into a single bright bead
inside the porchlight—

like a thought I meant to finish,
or an apology I kept editing
until the meaning fell out.

It’s the porch of the blue house,
the one just down the road
from that whole Malibu dream

we tried to inhabit.
And I keep replaying
our first Halloween party,

remember? You in the ruby slippers,
me in that stupid “KANSAS” tee
in BRAT font, like I was auditioning
to be a state you’d speed through
on your way to someplace shinier.

We called the place “Maliboo”—
yes, the pun,
I know, I know,           but back then
nothing haunted us. Not really.

Only laughter slipping
under the doorframes,

glitter welded to the baseboards,
a bowl of punch glowing
like liquid rubies
on the kitchen table.… ...continue reading

I’m a Rhett Butler with whiskey stains on my shirt
dashing after a Jamaican princess
running room-to-room in an opulent mansion.

She intends to marry another man.
I intend to stop her.

Sancho and I chase her perfume,
always one door short of catching up.

I corner her on the third floor
under chandeliers that sparkle
bright as the costume jewelry around her neck.

“How dare you!”
                             Her eyes blaze royally.

I pull out my whiskey bottle to proffer as proof:
Don’t look at my stubbled chin – I’m not him.

She doesn’t believe me, so I tell her the rest:
You’re right, but feel inside me – then, you’ll see.

– Mike Wilson… ...continue reading